Browsing through The Globe and Mail website, I found this article posted. It is about “How Luxury Hotels Mine Social Media In The Name of Comfort”. When I read this article, somehow, I felt that things they mentioned in the article about how to mine social media don’t apply only to the hospitality industry. Since social media channels help company to interact and engage with their customers in real-time and more people are using social media, I believe that mining social media also applies to every business.

So, how to mine social media?

As listed by McKinsey & Company, there are four specific functions of social media. They are Monitoring, Responding, Amplifying, and Leading.

In the case of those luxury hotels mentioned in the article, they have a 24/7 monitoring system in order to track what their guests are saying about the hotel and their services in website reviews, such as TripAdvisor and Travelocity. It is believed that “online reputation can dictate the rise and fall of revenue per available room”. “It also cites statistics that 92 per cent of Internet users read product reviews”. In addition, they had orders to respond to complaints within four hours.

In my opinion, it’s important to apply all the McKinsey Principals in your business, since it affects your consumers’ decision whether to buy or not to buy your products or services. Companies are expected to monitor and understand their customers, and to respond their customers’ questions and problems fast. It is also important for the company to encourage their customers to spread the words, and lead them to discover new ideas and aware of the brands.

In the article, Daniel Edward Craig, a Vancouver consultancy, mentioned:

“The power has shifted, and we’ve lost control of our reputation, but there is a lot we can do to regain that control.”

I agree with what Daniel said in the article. In my opinion, one thing we can do to regain the control as marketers is to know how to utilize the power of social media in order to take part in the consumers’ decision journey, and to influence their decisions.